Toronto, Canada: CitiIQ has applied its novel measurement standard to 1,170 global cities as an important step toward measuring the 4,000 cities of the world with a population of over 100,000.
The 1,170 cities include those with populations greater than 500,000, the world’s country capitals, and the state capitals of Brazil, India China and the USA.
“Increasingly, the health and wellbeing of people depend upon the effectiveness of their city,” says Don Simmonds, Chief Executive Officer of CitiIQ. “Municipal leaders face immense challenges and benefit greatly when comprehensive, comparable data is available to guide their decisions.”
Most cities struggle to translate disparate data into actions that can make life better for their citizens. The CitiIQ measurement system is an objective assessment of the overall health and wellbeing of a city. It converts raw data into scores out of 100 so that city elements are readily compared within a given city, or with other cities around the world.
CitiIQ uses an evidence-based methodology to score 35 essential elements, or Considerations, within five prioritized Dimensions including Basic Needs, Competitiveness, Opportunity, Livability, and Destiny. Using an intuitive online dashboard, a city’s measurements are readily available to clients through a cloud-based annual subscription.
“The CitiIQ measurement helps immensely in understanding the factors that influence a city,” says Harry Loubser, Managing Director of Unashamedly Ethical based in Cape Town, South Africa. “It’s value to municipal leaders is readily apparent but the ability to compare city to city across so much of the world is a powerful advantage. We can clearly identify where best practise has been applied, but also illuminate cities with the greatest needs.”
The CitiIQ system is easy to use, economical, and effective with no need to purchase new software or abandon existing metrics. Aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, CitiIQ provides a practical way for a city to mark progress toward SDG achievement.
City Administrators appreciate the integration of economic, environmental, social and cultural infrastructure measures reflecting how a city actually functions. The algorithm normalizes data into a comparable, holistic picture of their city’s strengths and weaknesses bringing coherence and comparability to their operations and an ability to compare with other cities.
In April 2020 CitiIQ was selected by UN-Habitat to develop a COVID-19 Readiness and Responsiveness tracking site for more than 1,000 global cities. Data was often unavailable at a city level where the real battle is fought. The scoring reflects both how ready a city was for COVID-19 and how well they are responding to the pandemic. COVID-19 data is collected daily for the 1,000 cities supporting improve responses to the pandemic. Visit: https://unhabitat.citiiq.com/.
